Ralph allows himself to be one of Jack's followers. He is
struggling with his role as leader, trying to hang on to it,
wanting to let go when Simon makes his prophecy. Ralph
gives in to the lust for blood and later sees the beast.

Golding brings us close to Ralph, as though we were thinking
his thoughts, stumbling along behind Jack, feeling the forest.
He distracts himself with thoughts of cleaning himself, "his
toilet." Ralph has made a complete circle in his thinking:
Civilization is now the dream, not freedom from it.

All the boys are dirty, not from playing but because they're cut
off from the civilizing effects of the world. Their clothing is
mostly gone, only tattered pieces remaining to remind them of
the past, and filth has become an accepted part of their life.
Ralph realizes that he is giving in to the jungle. "He
discovered with a little fall of the heart that these were the
conditions he took as normal now and that he did not mind."

Ralph's values have adjusted themselves once again. Ralph is
discovering he can no longer stand to be isolated from the
civilized world and also be set apart from his group. As a
human being, he needs the comfort and friendship of the other
boys. Without the world he has always known to sustain him,
he cannot bear being cut off from his peers. He cannot sustain
himself.

Loneliness and the fear of isolation are common human
experiences. How often do you do something with your
friends, something you would never consider doing alone, just
to be with them? These are natural feelings for people of all
ages.

Your browser does not support the IFRAME tag.

The side of the island the boys are exploring differs from the
area where the lagoon and the shelters are. "The filmy
enchantments of mirage could not endure the cold ocean water
and the horizon was hard, clipped blue." The area where the
boys live is equated with home and safety-what they long for-
but on this side of the island Ralph can't hang on to his
illusions of leadership. It's too hard and too lonely, and he
feels "numbed" by the indifference of nature to human beings.
The sea with its rising and falling tides is vast; if it happens to
destroy man in its wake, the sea does not care. It is a moving,
living force that has no feelings, does not mind whether Ralph
or anyone else lives or dies. "Faced by the brute obtuseness of
the ocean, the miles of division, one was clamped down, one
was helpless, one was condemned."

Into Ralph's moment of despair Simon whispers like a spirit,
"You'll get back to where you came from." Ralph still has the
ocean in mind ("It's so big"), but he is struggling with his own
smallness, his limited ability to act as leader.

The irony in what Simon appears to be saying prompts Ralph
to respond in kind: "Got a ship in your pocket?" Because he
has come so far from the person he used to be, Ralph can't
fathom getting home again. He's too overwhelmed by the
indifference of the world about him, too lost-in a spiritual
sense-to find his way back. Simon's statement is prophetic,
and his spiritual nature encourages us to believe what he says.

NOTE: THE USE OF FABLE

Some critics argue that Lord of the Flies is a fable; others deny
this strongly. A fable is a tale in which the characters represent ideas
and the events point toward a moral. In a fable we don't usually care
much about the characters because they are representations rather than
real people. Aesop's "The Tortoise and the Hare" tells us something
about competition; we don't worry how the hare felt after losing the race.
But we do care about the characters in Lord of the Flies, for they are
believable people. In that sense, then, the book is not a fable.

However, each of the boys comes to represent something more than just
himself. Some readers interpret the story from a political point of view:
Ralph represents democratic power, Jack is totalitarian power, and Simon
is religion. Another critic may find that the characters stand for psychological
concepts. Still others may see the tale in terms of religion, as a battle
between good and evil. You may agree or disagree with any of these theories,
and you may well discover an entirely different way to understand Lord
of the Flies.

The important thing is that you notice your own reactions as you
read. The boys on the island seem to be reflections of other things we
know about. Their plight is ours, and what happens to them will somehow
affect us; they offer us insights and ideas about ourselves. If you find
this to be true, you may begin to see the events of the story taking on
a significance beyond the story itself. In this way Lord of the Flies
is like a fable, because of the meaning the characters and events take
on.